Confessions of a Swim Coach....
 

....who can only just do a decent crawl and a passable breast-stroke.

If you had told me even 5 years ago that I'd be a swim coach one day, I'd've laughed 'til I peed (in the pool). After I'd finished my lap of poodle-style breaststroke.

Yet today was my first day as a swim coach -a paid swim coach, no less. Ok admittedly there was no competition for the job and I'm only paid because getting me (and my partner in crime, another swim mom) on the payroll also gets us insured etc.... but it brings a whole new level of responsibility -one that i'm determined to take seriously. not just responsibilty for the kids, but also to them. Plus this is my first paid job in the US!

First, a little background....

My kids go to a public school, but it's one with an alternative ("hippie") approach to education, and so is a magnet school -that means all kids within the school disctrict can go there (if they can get in -lottery entry, long waiting lists). It's small (because our program works best in smaller learning communities) and it's K-8 which means we have middle schoolers. Middle school students can compete with the other middle schools at various sports throughout the year. Historically, the Open School hasn't done much of this because we're all about co-operative learning and personal goals rather than winning. Plus we only have 150 middle-school kids, compare to the 1000 or so in the other schools, and ours live all over the city not locally, so kids who've wanted to compete in sports have just joined the team at their local middle school.

Recently, there has been more interest in competitive sports at the school, We've fielded a few eams in the "easy" sports -the ones most kids and teachers know and need little coaching. But never a swim team before. My friend and I decided that needed to change because our daughters entered 6th grade and we know there are many other good -seriously good- swimmers who would love the chance to represent their school, so the "Athletic Director" (my 4th grader's teacher who gets a ittle extra for the title and has a vague interest in sports) said, if you coach it, we can do it.

So now here we are.

First day of practice. 15 kids showed up which was great -we had about 25 said they wanted to join, but there was no bus home after practice today (for whatever reason :rolleyes:), so some bus kids couldn't stay, and some didn't realize volleyball would clash with swimming, so opted for that instead. I asked around, and about 20-30 is the usual size of the team in the middle schhols with hundreds of kids. also at our school turn-up is usually only a maximum of 50% of expressed interest, and we need only 10 to run the team, so we were happy.

we were even more happy to learn that 13 of them could swim very well, about half of them are reaonably skilled in all 4 competitive strokes (we already knew that), the rest make a reasonable showing in all but butterfly.

So I got the two "drowners" -this what what we thought would be the best way before we started, but just seemed to occur naturally anyway. (the other coach is a former swimmer and swim instructor so is all up in the fancy stuff, I'm a swim mom of many years standing... if you spend long enough in the bleachers, you know a decent stroke when you see one... and enough time watching lessons will give you the terminology for dealing with the basics...)

A is a small 6th grader, who I suspect is a loner -and that's possibly why swimming appeals. He has a basic idea of freestyle, backstroke and breastroke, but no power, more of a lick and a promise (a UK term I LOVE,feel free to google it ;) ) His arm movements were minimal, his legs bent like a cyclist and he took about three minutes to swim a lenth in any stroke. Well maybe not that much but it felt like it. but he was super-keen and ready to learn.

D is a big 7th grader with some educational/social issues. Not sure what, it was a bit of a surprise as usually parents mention such things.. but anyhoo, he presents as a high-functioning aspy type, so I can deal with that. He started by telling us he couldn't do crawl, but his doggypaddle was OK, then proceeded to do a really nice crawl, just tired early. His breastroke was more like two-armed doggy-paddle, and his backstroke had the lifeguard over in a flash. it was hard to tell which direction he was supposed to be going in, it was more like a sucession of oyeters from a synchronized swimmer.

I felt like a fraud as a coach when I started this adventure, but somehow I managed to get both A and D to trust me and try the things I suggested, and by the end of the hour I had them both doing a recognizable backstroke and breaststroke, and the life guard went over to learn flipturns from the other coach.

I found that both kids responded well to learning why it's best to move their arms and legs in a certain way -how it made the water flow around them. -Not to "windmill" in the backstroke but to push the water down the sides of the body...) Looks like I found nerds like me :D. I know what the strokes should look like -I've sat on enough pool decks and watched enough coaches, but apparently, these two kids have done that too. The first time i demonstrated what I wanted, the improved a little, but the second time when I told them why it works and to focus on moving the water rather than moving through it, they improved a lot.

Similar story for the breaststroke. Maybe I'm not such a fraud, after all? I feel good about practice tonight. Coach M is gonna have to teach them the fly though. Then I'll explain why it works....

Man, I never got the point of the butterfly. Such an incredibly inefficient stroke. Anyway, congrats on the new job, monster!

inefficient? it's faster than back or breast (it was developed as a more efficient form of breaststroke)... just requires drowning, as far as I can tell...

..we were chatting with a few of the kids after practice and I said "oh i can't fly either" and M said "you have a really nice fly" which was cool except she can only ever have seen me do 4/5 experimental strokes, after which I felt I must breathe and so options were drown or stop....

Australia once had an olympic swim coach who could not swim. Really. (I think it was Lawrie Lawrence, maybe not).

One time some of the junior members of the squad tossed him in the pool at the end of a meet. He struggled gamely for a moment before some senior swimmers remembered that he can't swim and jumped in to drag him out. lol!

I had Lawrie Lawrence for squad training when I was kid. I couldn't stand him. wish I'd known he couldn't swim.

If you weren't swimming fast enough, he'd hit you on the head with a big stick he used to walk up and down the side of the pool with.

American also.
Good luck with the coaching career.

I saw a cellar tagline hidden in your post Monstah!

hehe.

Really, Bruce? Cool. I get strange looks when I use it here and when I googled a few sites said british. Maybe it's regional.

Feedback so far is positive. we don't want it to be a heavy pressure team -we're out for fun and improved swimming and if we win any races, all the better.

We went straight from practice to a meet for the other team ...a distance meet no less! I'm pooped, never mind the kids -who had no idea that is was a 200 instead of a 100 yard race like it is in the fall. :lol: They were a little harder to wake this morning ...but a lot more pleasant (they're always better tempered when they've had a workout)

"A lick and a promise" was a fairly common expression I heard growing up. But then that was in Western NC. Perhaps it filtered down through the Appalachian Scots/Irish heritage.

Anyway.. coaching a swim team? Be careful.. you can get in trouble.

Common in New England, at least in the rural parts... don't know about them there city slickers.

This thread wasn't nearly as smutty as the title hinted it might be...

...it wasn't political, though..... ;)

Hey . . . I tried!!

I just completed my online training in Bloodborne Pathogens, Diversity and Sexual Harassment. What fun! (nearly 2 hours....)

Thursday's practice was a bit of a PITA -the lifeguard "forgot" so walked past us as he left the building and had to be called back (we assumed he was just going to get something from somewhere....). 20 Minutes later, we got into the pool. Backstroke was the feature of the day. I took the same two guys and we made a lot of progress, but I was worried about how they would swim "under pressure" -most kids do better, but some don't. However, when we practiced backstroke starts, one kid at a time, all watching, they swam their best ever -straightest arms, fastest motion... and were pleased as punch when they hit the wall. They have a long way to go, but in two hours, they've already blown my socks off!

The two kids I have really want to swim, but they have the sort of personalities that make it hard for them to learn what they need to know in a large group. One of them (who is not so keen on change) has the same goggles he's had for many years. They are too small for him and opaque, so i explained to his mom how to choose the right pair for him, and went on to explain what we had been working on in his backstroke, asking my daughter, hebe, to demonstrate.

Hebe said to me later... it was really weird, you don't sound like a mom anymore, you sound like a swim coach. :o

You don't have to be a world record breaker to train them.
Or even a professional football coach to coach them.
You just have to have perception, enthusiasm and nous. And that's definitely an English term ;)

You go for it Mon. You're just what they need!

My SIL was named after a German swimmer her Dad coached. Can't give any more details without giving them away. But she's a far better swimmer than her Dad - and he was a fantastic coach.

Personally, I hate swimming. It comes from growing up with hearing problems and encroaching short-sightedness. Oh and being very skinny and a late developer. The whole swimming experience was hideous for me after age 13 - I couldn't recognise anyone, the echoes were frightening, I was flat chested and my hip bones stuck out. And even in the pool I felt ashamed because the "fun" things to do involved getting out & jumping in, or diving under people's legs.

Part of me wishes I'd had a daughter, because I'd have been So Bloody Fierce about making sure she knew she was gorgeous. But then I'd have fucked her up in other ways no doubt.

Monster, you're lucky to have come across this opportunity...it will benefit you and the kids. Im envious.

Breaststroke today. TWO hand touch, no flip turns! :lol: We also did some medley relays which they seemed to enjoy. Thursday will be tricky -Butterfly, which only a few of them already know..... first meet next Friday, already working on our line up.....

OOOOh, I'm all excited... just submitted the entries for the Friday meet -had to do it all properly using Team Manager Software.... both of our other swim teams are so small that we only usually have to do this for the end of season championships, so it's the first time I've used it.

anyhoo, it was fun to learn and pretty nifty -I made our winter team buy Meet Manager for next year -too many other teams want to go the electronic route and are starting to get pissy with us for being all paper oriented, so i'm glad i've lost my cherry in that area.

The good news for us is... We may actually stand a chance of being pretty awesome! We are a tiny Middle School as we are part of a k-8 school, so have only 150 middle school kids, compared to 600 average. But our kids get swimming class every week from kindergarten -other kids only start swim class in 6th grade. And swimming is a sport that fits well with our philosophy of co-operative learning -working together to help each other improve their own skills rather than just being out to be better than the others.

So, we have a team of 19 kids who can really swim and love it. We heard that another middle school has 22 kids (out of 550) and most of them are newbs, on the team becuase their parents view it as free swim lessons. I'm sad that these kids are only coming to swimming in 6th grade and obly doing it because it's free, but I'm also optimistic for our team because they always get beaten at these IM sports things basically because they're outnumbered. Here, they have a chance of representing their school. doing well and feeling good. we aren't going to win, but for once, we may not be distant last. and we have enough swimmers in each event that being outnumbered should not be an issue.

I still wish all kids got swim class from kindergarten, though. I had all my kids in the pool by 6 months, and before that, we did deep baths with controlled submersion. I was terrified of them drowning either by not being able to swim of being scared of the water and panicking.


We have no 8th-grader on the team, but a couple of 5th graders are "swimming up". we may be the youngest team to. we'll still rock, though. and we have bright orange caps with pandas on them :D

Well fucking damn it and a lot of other bad words.....

I got the heat sheets for Friday's meet and our swimmers have been screwed because we gave honest seed times. We contemplated a little "tweaking" but decided against, bacuase the events are "beginner" events, so we figured we should go the "beginner" route. The other teams didn't do a "little tweaking" either -they did a whole shitload!

I have kids who swim year round and I marshall all the meets and all the championships and write up the results...so I know many of the swimmers on the other teams. Not to say hi to so much, but I know how fast they can swim. There are kids who my daughter could lap in a 100 (4 lengths) ranked above her for thos meet.....with times so ridiculous that if they were true, the kids would be receiveing lucrative scholarships to olympic swim camp.

OK, so our swimmers will probably win their heats. that's nice... but the real aim (especially as our swimmers are so young and competing against kids up to 4 years older) is to beat your own personal best. That's hard to do if you win your heat easily and there's no-one at your shoulder bringing it on...

Why the #$%@ do people cheat at amateur kids sport????

They are sooo doing it totally and utterly #$%@ing WRONG.


BTW learning to swim is pretty much a default part of childhood here. (Skiing and blizzard survival skills, not so much...). We had a pool at our school, and also got private multi-week courses every summer holiday, and we were by no means rich or unusual in this.

But then, Aussies are beach crazy surf-gods who would rather swim than root.

So... the kids I knew had BS seed times swam way slower than their seeds, so I wasn't hallucinating (and so did their team-mates in the main), but maybe 50% of the times were within 15%, so it wasn't so bad, as it turned out.

In the events where all our swimmers ended up in the slowest two heats, we blew everyone else out of the water and came away with all our swimmers finishing way before anyone else. Not a real race for them, but it was at the beginning of the meet, so i think it helped to bolster their spirits, because we are always lame duck team in the other sports andmany of them have never competed before. Karma I reckon. Good things come from being screwed ;)

Side note on the lame duck thing... We're a public k-8 magnet school with an alternative program. We're the "hippy school" we're into co-operative rather than competitive learning, and are all about personal improvement rather than being top of the class. This attitude, obviously, is not as effective in a sporting environment. Plus we only have 150 middle school kids and a no exclusion policy, compared to the other schools who have 600 to choose from and are happy to pick an elite team and send the rest away. we just don't work that way. So we lose a lot. It's OK, we're good losers. ;)

But swimming is the perfect sport for us and our philosophy, because it's a team thing, but to benefit the team, you do the best you can and aim to improve on your time and don't worry about anyone else. So you can be competitive and hippy at the same time.

Anyhoo... the Pandas Rocked today. all 19 showed up (we started with 15 and got up to 19, it usually works the other way with sports at our school) many of them had never competed before and were a little nervous about knowing when their races would be and what they needed to do, but once the medley relays were over (a logistical nightmare for us) they realized we knew our stuff and would get them where they needed to be on time.

We made them wear team caps. Only one other team had a team cap and only a few swimmers wore it. Ours really stood out in the pool (which helps when you're seriously outnumbered) It turned out that this helped with the team spirit -they loved that they all had the same caps, and I think the parents loved it too, because we asked for donations, but all swimmers got one regardless. after the meet, parents were falling over themselves to pay for the caps.

No team scores were kept, so we made our own, just to see... and basically the 6 Middle schools are in two leagues of 3. Those who score 550 points average and those who are more around the 100 mark. We hit the latter 3 - but in the middle. The school below us is the school my children should attend and the most "impoverished" school in the area. they get some awesome swimmers because they are the local school for the kids who swim at our sumer pool, but they also get a load of kids who can't swim at all and whose parents view swim team as free lessons. The other school is the biggest of the six middle schools, have 48more kids tan we do and ar in an afluent area. So to get half the ponts they did is very heartwarming.

But most importantly, Our Pandas were AWESOME. no-one got too scared, they all stepped up and did their best and almost everyone bettered their seed time -and that's what we asked of them.

this is them at warm-up

OK, I have the heat sheets for the second and final meet. What a difference! we have swimmers seeded in the top heats for two events and the second-fastest for many more. And they're not made-up times We've been a little bolder and the other teams have been much more realistic.

We're also being a little more mercenary. One of the top heat seeds is my daughter in the 25 free. This is for 6th grade only, and -we presumed- aimed for the 6th-graders who can barely swim. so that's who we put in it last time -our 6 slowest 6th graders. The event was won in 14 seconds by a State level USA swimmer. So, this time, no prisoners. Hebe is 6th grade, but she's actually up a grade and is tiny. She is a USA swimmer, but not at State Championship level, so it's a fair play, we reckon. (In regular competitive swimming, you stop swimmming 25yards when you turn 9, so she's excited/amused to be doing a 25 after 2.5 years away from it!)

Also, last meet, we started planning our entries by putting whoever could fly/IM in those events -the meet was so soon after the start of the season that we had to rely on swimmers who already knew butterfly for those events. now we've had time to teach the fly properly, we have several new swimmers willing to swim those events, releasing our seasoned swimmers to swim what they're best at. In Hebe's case this is breaststroke.

Wish us luck for tomorrow....

unfortunatley, we just got word that one of our swimmers has the painters and decorators in and is scared of mice, so we have to completely redo our relays (she's "B" relay and we go through E.)

:eyebrow:

Good luck!

Good luck for the meet, but can you explain that last bit some more? WTF does decorating and mice have to do with swimming relays?

it's a female swimmer thing (didn't you get Bend It Like Beckham over there?)

Our swimmers are 11-14. 2/3 are girls. They have strange new stuff happening to their bodies. Girls who have been competitive swimmers before they "became women" know without a doubt that they'll get their first period on the dawn of a championship meet and will have to quickly make friends with Mr. Tampax. Girls for whom competitive awimming is also new are apparently blissfully unaware that you cannot wear pads in the pool.

Ohh, hang on, now I think I'm getting it ...


[/slow]

Well the end of season rocked. We did even better at the second meet, several of the teachers turned up in their own time to watch and the swimmers did great.

The female swimmer with the problem was really sad not to swim, so we made her assistant coach and she was all happy again. The boys didn't know not to ask why (too young), but she handled it well and with dignity.

The swimmers rocked, the end of season pizza party and paper plate awards went down well yesterday, but the best thing was hearing from a parent at another school who I know from other swim teams (and who is generally a real bitch) that she was sat in the stand commenting on the fact that we have a team for the first time and (I'm interpreting here) what a shame that parents have to coach it..... and then a mother in front of her turned round and said to her "that's the team my daughter's on and this has been the best thing ever. Those parents decided we need a swim team and stepped up to coach it and did a great job. that's what our school is all about and we're so proud to be part of it".

I felt a fraud at the start, but now I don't. I may not be the next olympic swim coach, but I know enough to help some middle school kids who've never competed before become better swimmers, and I care enough to make something happen that was missing before. That's pretty cool, even though i say so myslef. we're gonna do it all over again -only bigger- next year.

Seems like the season went by so fast! Is there any sort of summer program?

not for the school, but plenty in the area and we made sure the swimmers knew about them....especially ours :D

God, I'm bored. recertifying in this online (even though I just certified as a lifeguard which included this......)

sigh

And they now made it so you can't jump ahead and just take the test at the end. you have to troll through the whole thing...

...on slide 29 out of 39.... about to slit my wrists and give myself some practice in BBP control......

:zzz: